TRANSITIONS
You are reading this in the cold of winter, but it is being written during the massive
heat wave of early August, 2006 (remember it?). We are still struggling with the
aftermath of the recent hurricanes, and what they revealed about the irresponsibility
and inequity of capitalist societies, especially in periods when the inner thrust of
those societies toward polarization and crisis is not held in check by a strong
working-class movement. We hear the dire warnings in Al Gore's Inconvenient
Truth and Jared Diamond's Collapse, works that are as striking for their forceful
call to come to grips with nature's constraints, as they are for their failure to address
the insufficiency of capitalist social relations that block any lasting solutions.
Capitalist accumulation, while increasingly transnational, is also failing in
crucial ways to remake the world in its image; to uproot precapitalist structures and
consciousness. The end of the 20th-century socialisms, and the crushing of local
capitalist development by the financial, market and military power of the transnational corporations, have left a vacuum into which premodern religious fanaticism,
fueled by rising poverty and instability, pours. So, to take one tragic current example, the long-suffering Palestinian people, and the people of Israel, Jewish and Arab,
and of Lebanon, are all held hostage to the enemies of secular, democratic development — a united front of TNCs, financial oligarchs, mullahs, Islamic jihadists and
Israeli nationalists. Capitalism increasingly cannot now carry the torch of progress
— it has a structural ambivalence toward the very process that it used to promote,
albeit in exploitative and distorted forms — and the working class, recovering from
recent world-historic defeats, is not yet ready to step into the breach.
This is, of course, much too dark a picture. We should rejoice in, and be part
of, the profound shift to the left in Latin America. This holds forth the prospect of
an economic and political coming-together of Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Cuba,
strong forces within Argentina, Mexico, and other countries of the region, into a
critical mass adequate to challenge U. S. hegemony, resist counterrevolution, and
build along socialism-inspired pathways. The peoples of Western Europe are also,
by and large, standing firm against neoliberal re-proletarianization, destruction of
social spaces and denial of human dignity; the victory over Berlusconi in Italy and
the recent massive demonstrations in France against attempts to gut job security
and pensions are cases in point. And there are signs of independent labor activity
in China, with ramifications throughout Asia.
It is an interesting world, and S&S readers will not need to be convinced that
the Marxist tradition, in both theory and practice, is more necessary than ever if we
are to carve through the thickets of ideology and mystification and bring the core
social realities into the light of day. In our continuing pursuit of that goal, we need
to report on one small transition in which everyone in the community of Science &
Society readers, editors, authors and supporters has an interest.
Last year, our long-standing affiliation with John Jay College, of the City
University of New York, came to an end. The College informed us that it needed, for
other purposes, the space that we had occupied for 33 years. The search for a new
academic sponsor is continuing. In the meantime, we have decided to rent office
space from the Brecht Forum, a left educational and cultural institution that is well
known in the New York City area. We are very hopeful about this new relationship,
and expect that the BF and S&S will find ways to cooperate, to mutual benefit. The
S&S Editorial Board remains independent, of course, in pursuit of our chosen
project: to bring together the best in Marxist and Marxism-inspired scholarship, in
the service of building transitions, in our time of complex social, ideological and
ecological challenges.
Our new address is:
Science & Society
451 West Street
New York, NY 10014 / USA
Phone/Fax: 212-924-0205
Website: www.scienceandsociety.com
Contact: info@scienceandsociety.com
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IN THIS ISSUE
Our special issue devoted to "The Deep Structure of the Present Moment"
(Vol. 69, No. 3, July 2005) had several contributions on the nature of globalization:
is there anything new here, and, if so, what? Against the idea that neoliberal
globalization involves transcendence of nation-states by increasingly transnational
capital, Spyros Sakellaropoulos argues, in the current issue, that states continue to
play an essential role in capitalist reproduction, and that therefore a "global
capitalism" is not possible. From this standpoint, the international organizations
(IMF, WTO, etc.) are not embryonic forms of a new world state for a developing
transnational capitalist class; rather, they are fora in which the various national
capitalist interests are played out. Sakellaropoulos' concept of the "headquarters
state" embodies his view that the rise of neoliberalism is not a displacement of the
state as such, but rather a change in the form of the state and in the content of its
roles and policies.
The history of the left, both worldwide and country-specific, often comes
down to us boxed in conceptual frameworks, or periodizations. We then tend to
dismiss evidence that the reality is far richer than the formulaic structures would
imply. The case in point is the so-called "Third Period," in which the Communist
International, perhaps especially in reaction to the disastrous results of united-front
strategy in China, 1927–28, promoted sectarian and self-isolating policies. In the
United States, this meant retreating from work within the AFL unions in favor of
building separate, "red" unions. The legacy of the Trade Union Unity League
(TUUL) in the late 1920s–early 1930s is often belittled, and seen as part of the
Third-Period overreaction (whose worst effect, indeed, may well have been the
failure of Communists and Socialists in Europe to unite against the rising fascist
danger). Labor historian Victor Devinatz argues, to the contrary, that the TUUL had
many positive accomplishments, especially in light industries; moreover, the TUUL
promoted a principle of democratic unionism and rank-and-file participation that
contributed significantly to the later CIO organizing drives in basic industry, where
the TUUL itself had not achieved significant influence.
The renowned 20th-century Marxist economist and economic historian
Maurice Dobb — a frequent contributor to Science & Society over many years, and
a mentor to many of our editors and readers, including the undersigned — had one
especially illustrious student, Amartya Sen. Sen, currently at Harvard University,
has become a major figure in the critical assault upon neoclassical orthodoxy in
economics, and in re-thinking the philosophical foundations of economics (where
particularly naive versions of positivism seem to have found their last foothold in
the human sciences). Sen, a past President of the American Economic Association,
is an influential figure within social science — an instance of a phenomenon in
which Marxism has had a far greater impact on intellectual life in capitalist societies
than those societies are wont to acknowledge, an impact that is often unknown or
under-appreciated in Marxist circles as well. So we are pleased to present Vivian
Walsh's assessment of Sen's work, which began as a review of Rationality and
Freedom but clearly became much more than that. Walsh is not only a reviewer,
but also a long-time collaborator of Sen, and of other figures in both economic and
philosophical circles who emerge in his narrative; he is ideally suited to present the
core of Sen's work in a form adapted for a Marxist and marxisant audience.
Philosopher Sean Sayers has an extensive body of writing on what is
sometimes called the anthropology within Marxism: the notion of species-being,
the distinctive quality of human existence (see, in particular, his Marxism and
Human Nature, 1998). In this new paper, he reconsiders the categories "individual"
and "society" and their interrelation. While providing a new statement of the
common core shared by Hegel, Marx, and the present-day communitarian
literature, in rejection of the atomistic individualism of Enlightenment philosophers
and their present-day echoes, Sayers first distinguishes Marx from Hegel — they
transcend atomistic individualism in different ways — and then considers the
implications for communitarianism, and for the overall project of envisioning a
society that goes beyond the damage wrought by individualism against real human
individuals. Sayers thus develops Marx's critique of the communitarians — whom
Marx of course did not live long enough to actually meet.
Finally, we refer to David Laibman's critique of two views of the demise of the
Soviet Union and presentation of his own alternative view ("The Soviet Demise:
Revisionist Betrayal, Structural Defect, or Authoritarian Distortion?", S&S,
October, 2005). Now the proponents of one of the views considered, Roger Keeran
and Thomas Kenny, reply to Laibman's critique. This is followed by Laibman's
"brief response." It need not be stated that this is an on-going discussion, and we
encourage continuing input from readers on all aspects of this important issue.
D. L.
